8 votes

Any literary translators here? What programs do you use?

I've started doing this amateurishly a few months ago, translating a novel slowly, and nowadays I'm thinking of going to a few publishers and asking for actual contracts. Currently, I'm using an Org mode file in Emacs to do the translation, but I'm not sure that this is the most optimal way to do it. I was doing it using paper for a while, but editing and commenting is more flexible in Org mode. Yet it is also rather cumbersome the way I do it:

<<pageNo.paragraphNo.sentenceNo>> Text, text text
#
some text with a comment
# comment about the part between this comment and the above empty one
more text, more text. <<...>> Another sentence

I'm thinking of adding some code to make this a bit prettier, though.

But are there anything that's better out there already. My preference hierarchy: Emacs mode, yayyy! > Open source app, that's fine > Proprietary app, shit! but better than nothing.

I'm not sure if this should go under ~comp, ~tech or here (~books).